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Hume’s Self-Interest Requirement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert Shaver
Robert Shaver*
Affiliation:
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, CanadaR3T 2MB
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Extract

Having explained the moral approbation attending merit or virtue, there remains nothing but briefly to consider our interested obligation to it, and to inquire whether every man, who has any regard to his own happiness and welfare, will not best find his account in the practice of every moral duty. (E 278)

[W]hat theory of morals can ever serve any useful purpose, unless it can show, by a particular detail, that all the duties which it recommends, are also the true interest of each individual? (E 280)

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1994

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References

1 Reference to works by Hume will be cited in the text as follows: T = A Treatise of Human Nature, L.A. Selby-Bigge and P.H. Nidditch, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1978); E =An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, L.A. Selby-Bigge and P.H. Nidditch, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1975); and NR = Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, R.H. Popkin, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett 1980); and from the Essays, Eugene F. Miller, ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty 1985), S = ‘The Sceptic’; NC = ‘Of National Characters’; IP = ‘Of the Independency of Parliament’; PO = ‘Of Passive Obedience’; and OG =‘Of the Origin of Government.’

2 For a similar point, see Munro, D.H.'s Introduction to his A Guide to the British Moralists (London: Fontana 1972), 20Google Scholar.

3 For the argument that morality does not satisfy SIR, see Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett 1977) II.5Google Scholar. For two excellent (though brief) recent histories that feature SIR, see Frankena, William K. ‘Concepts of Rational Action in the History of Ethics,’ Social Theory and Practice 9 (1983) 165-97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Sidgwick and the History of Ethical Dualism’ in Schultz, Bart ed., Essays on Henry Sidgwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992) 175-98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Capaldi, Nicholas Hume's Place in Moral Philosophy (New York: Peter Lang 1989), 256; 260Google Scholar

5 Balfour, James A Dilineation of the Nature and Obligation of Morality, with Reflexions upon Mr. Hume's Book, intitled, An Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (Edinburgh, 1753), 46, 49-54, 57, 73Google Scholar; Reid, Thomas Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, in Philosophical Works vol. 2 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag 1967), 660Google Scholar; Gauthier, David ‘David Hume, Contractarian,’ Philosophical Review 89 (1979) 3–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Three Against Justice: The Foole, the Sensible Knave, and the Lydian Shepherd,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy 7 (1982) 11-29; ‘Artificial Virtues and the Sensible Knave,’ Hume Studies 18 (1993) 401-28; Barry, Brain Theories of Justice (Berkeley: University of California 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. IV. I myself took E 278 and 280 seriously in ‘Hume on the Duties of Humanity,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 (1992) 545-56.

6 Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1968) ch. 15, 203, 204

7 Hobbes, Leviathan ch. 14, 192. For discussions of Hobbes's psychological egoism, see Hampton, Jean Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986), 19–24Google Scholar and Kavka, Gregory Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1986), 44–51Google Scholar.

8 Locke, John ‘Of Ethick in General,’ in Lord King, The Life and Letters of fohn Locke (New York: Burt Franklin 1972), 309-12Google Scholar. For SIR and psychological egoism deployed relentlessly against Hutcheson and Samuel Clarke, see Clarke, John The Foundation of Morality in Theory and Practice considered, in Selby-Bigge, ed. British Moralists vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon 1897) 239-44Google Scholar and Frankena, ‘Action,’ 183.

9 For a similar discussion of the maxim, see Miller, David Philosophy and Ideology in Hume's Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1981), 105-6Google Scholar.

10 Butler, Joseph Sermons, in Works, Gladstone, W.E. ed. (Clarendon: Oxford 1897) vol. 2, XI.21Google Scholar

11 Butler, Sermons, XI.2, 21-2

12 Butler, Sermons, pref. 22

13 For more evidence in favour of this interpretation, see White, Alan R. ‘Conscience and Self-Love in Butler's Sermons,’ Philosophy 27 (1952) 329-44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, A.E. ‘Some Features of Butler's Ethics,’ Mind 35 (1926) 294–300Google Scholar; Kleinig, John ‘Butler in a Cool Hour’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 7 (1969) 399–411CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Duncan-Jones, Austin Butler's Moral Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1952), 113-15Google Scholar. I write ‘fewer’ because Butler holds, contrary to the allowance made in the quoted passages, that conscience can motivate. See White, ‘Conscience,’ 334-5. White also notes that Butler is following Shaftesbury's claim that ‘though the habit of selfishness and the multiplicity of interested views are of little improvement to real merit or virtue; yet there is a necessity for the preservation of virtue, that it should be thought to have no quarrel with true interest and self-enjoyment’ (337). See Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc., Robertson, John M. ed. (Gloucester: Peter Smith 1963) vol. 1, 274Google Scholar.

14 Similarly, after noting that ‘when the execution of justice would be attended with very pernicious consequences, that virtue must be suspended, and give place to public utility,’ Hume asks whether he ‘would not be better employed in inculcating the general doctrine, than in displaying the particular exceptions, which we are, perhaps, but too much inclined, of ourselves, to embrace and extend?’ (PO 489, 491) As in the Enquiry, however, Hume does not take this advice, for he goes on to excuse ‘that party among us, who have, with so much industry, propagated the maxims of resistance’ (PO 491).

15 For a similar argument in Hobbes, see Kavka, Theory, 310-14.

16 Balfour complains that ‘virtue is represented as a subject of talk and declamation, but of very little force to influence the heart and life’ (Delineation, 123). For a similar point put sympathetically, see Baier, Annette C. A Progress of Sentiments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1991), 183-5Google Scholar and Miller, Thought, 42, 56. Baier even suggests that practicality is demanded only ad hominem against the rationalist, but this is an unlikely reading of E 171-3.

17 Baier, Progress, 243

18 Gauthier, ‘Artificial Virtues’; Stroud, Barry Hume (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1977), 205-18Google Scholar; Postema, Gerald ‘Hume's Reply to the Sensible Knave,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 5 (1988) 23-5Google Scholar; Buckle, Stephen Natural Law and the Theory of Property (Oxford: Clarendon 1991), 291-5Google Scholar; Baron, Marcia ‘Hume's Noble Lie: An Account of his Artificial Virtues,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (1982) 539-55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Stroud, Hume, 210, 215; second italics added. See also 208 and 214.

20 Thus Baron admits that self-interest ‘frequently does explain our motivation.’ Stroud admits that ‘[i]t should not be supposed that there are many people’ whose justice is not explained by self-interest, and that self-interest will ‘often’ recommend justice (‘Lie,’ 547n9; Hume, 206, 207).

21 For the effect of later artifices on our interests, see Baier, Progress, 235-6, 246-8; and ‘Artificial Virtues and the Equally Sensible Nonknaves: A Response to Gauthier,’ in Hume Studies 18 (1993) 429-40. For stress on moral education, see Frederick G. Whelan, Order and Artifice in Hume's Political Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985) 275-92.

22 I return to this point in the last paragraph of this section.

23 For a similar interpretation, see Páll Árdal, Passion and Value in Hume's Treatise (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1989), 172, 182; and J.L. Mackie, Hume's Moral Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul1980), 87.

24 Baron, ‘Lie,’ 546,541

25 As Baron notes, this is oversimplified. Hume may need to show that post-convention self-interest must win out, not only over each rival explanation taken alone, but also over all the rival explanations taken together ('Lie,’ 542n7). Perhaps Hume could avoid this burden by an appeal to the maxims that ‘nature acts by the simplest methods’ or that ‘where any principle has been found to have a great force and energy in one instance … ascribe to it a like energy in all similar instances’ (NR 77, E 204; also E 299, T 282, 473).

26 Baron's ‘noble lie’ interpretation has, by her lights, the additional drawback that even on it, SIR is not always met. She can claim only ‘far greater compliance’ (‘Lie,’ 551).

27 For criticisms of the reply to the knave, see, for example, Gauthier, ‘Artificial Virtues,’ ‘David Hume, Contractarian,’ 26, and ‘Three,’ 22; Postema, ‘Reply’; Stroud, Hume, 215-16; Baron, ‘Lie,’ 552-3; Barry, Justice, 167-8; Siebert, Donald T. The Moral Animus of David Hume (Newark: University of Delaware Press 1990), 181-2Google Scholar; Whelan, Order, 266; and Hampton, Jean ‘Two Faces of Contractarian Thought,’ in Vallentyne, Peter ed., Contractarianism and Rational Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), 40Google Scholar. One can, of course, follow Postema in drawing material from elsewhere inHume to improve the reply. Hume's remarks about the costs of secrecy to the clergy are particularly tempting (NC 199n3). But I assume here that no additional material will save the reply.

28 Hume's argument to show that humanity pays, given directly before the knave is introduced, has the same limitation. See E 281 and Butler, Sermons XI.12-20, from which the argument is taken. For a similar view of the reply to the knave, see Baier, ‘Artificial Virtues.’

29 I assume that here (and below) Hume agrees with the sceptic whose sentiments he intends to deliver. At one point, Hume notes that ‘[t]he Sceptic, perhaps, carries the matter too far,’ suggesting that at other points he has no quarrel with what the Sceptic says (S 177n).

30 Hume's use of ‘remedy’ may be intended to recall Shaftesbury and Butler. Shaftes bury writes that’ as to atheism; though it be plainly deficient and without remedy, in the case of ill judgments on the happiness of virtue, yet it is not, indeed, of necessity the cause of any such ill judgment’ (Characteristics, i, 275) Butler considers ‘a sceptic not convinced of [the] happy tendency of virtue, or being of a contrary opinion. [Shaftesbury's] determination is, that it would be without remedy’ (Sermons, pref. 20).

31 Postema, ‘Reply,’ 23

32 This passage is cited by Stroud, Hume, 208.

33 Similar passages can be handled in a similar way. Thus Hume notes that justice is ‘absolutely requisite … to the … well-being of every individual’ or ‘infinitely advantageous to … every part’ of society (T 497, 498). Justice ‘comprehend[s] the interest of each individual’ and ‘is advantageous … to every individual’ (T 529, 579 var. T 672). Baier cites T 498 to show that Hume is not a utilitarian. Samuel Freeman cites T 497 and 529 to make the same point, prefacing them by saying that ‘Hume is quite clear that systems of property must be to the advantage of every individual.’ Hume does hold that justice benefits everyone, particularly when compared to the state of nature. But to suppose that Hume is making SIR is to confuse description and prescription. See Baier, Progress, 250; and Freeman, ‘Property as an Institutional Convention in Hume's Account of Justice,’ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 73 (1991), 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Postema, ‘Reply,’ 30-1; Gauthier, ‘Artifical Virtues'; Stroud, Hume, 208-9, 214; Whelan, Order, 249, 265-6

35 See Miller, Thought, 63n8.

36 This passage is cited by Postema in ‘Reply,’ 25.

37 See Mackie, Theory, 152-4; and Whelan, Order, 213-14.

38 Butler, Sermons, III.13; also III.12

39 Reid, Active Powers, 598

40 Mill, John Stuart Utilitarianism (Indianapolis: Hackett 1979), ch. III, 26, 33, 28, 30Google Scholar

41 Sidgwick, Methods, 7, 119-20, 200, 366, 386; ‘Some Fundamental Ethical Controversies,’ Mind 14 (1989), 483

42 Sidgwick, ‘Controversies,’ 483; see also Methods, xx, 120. Sidgwick also, of course, gave notable arguments against SIR: see Methods, IV .II.

43 Sidgwick, ‘Controversies,’ 484; Methods, 498

44 Sidgwick, Methods, 508. I wish to thank Annette Baier, David Gauthier, Ken Gemes, Joyce Jenkins, Geoff Sayre-McCord, an audience at the University of Manitoba, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on this paper.